Is Twitter headed for an IPO?

It’s the service that few of us seem to be able to live without. But are we ready for another social media company to go public?

Talk of a Twitter IPO has been ramping up since late Thursday, when the social media leader used its own service to reveal that Cynthia Gaylor, a Morgan Stanley investment banker, will run its corporate development.

Seventeen-year veteran Gaylor has provided advice on IPOs, mergers and equity, debt and financing, according to her LinkedIn profile. She’s also worked on deals for Facebook, LinkedIn and Netflix, so tech is pretty much right up her alley.

It’s her experience in advising IPOs that has would-be investors particularly excited, because many believe that’s the natural next step for Twitter.

“This kind of hire is a clear indicator that Twitter is preparing now for an IPO,” said Sam Hamadeh, founder of market research firm PrivCo, in comments to the FT. Analysts see the social media leader, which launched in 2009 and saw a more than $9 billion investment by BlackRock, as more than ready to list, the report added.

Of course, ZDNet was quick to remind us that in a recent interview on Bloomberg, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said the company is “not even thinking” about floating on the stock market anytime soon. There have been plenty of post-IPO tech flops, he warned, such as Zynga, Groupon and LinkedIn. (The WSJ’s Moneybeat blog gives a fairly good rundown of how those companies have fared post-launch. Also see Five tech CEOs in the hotseat)

“Given this, it would still be a major IPO — if not the next largest if not most significant IPO since Facebook debuted mid-last year — but it’s not known how well the company would fare on the market, sans a strong and stable revenue stream,” said ZDNet.

Josef Schuster, of IPOX Schuster, a Chicago-based firm that specializes in financial products related to IPOs and spinoffs, says the Morgan Stanley hire underlines Twitter’s “ambition to put a value on the firm through a stock market listing.” He says it’s just a “matter of time before Twitter will seek a listing to put a price on their popularity,” guessing that could come as early as November of this year.

And as for investing in any IPO? Well, Schuster says it would “definitely be a ‘hot’ IPO in terms of its initial market valuation under current market conditions, which may not make it a good long-run investment.”

And what says the Twitter universe itself? On the heels of those not-so-fabulous LinkedIn results that sent shares plunging 10% on Friday, there may be lack of appetite out there this morning.

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